Press Release

Time and nature are two concepts, always tied up together. The first, a variable made by humanity to scan the vital rhythm that influences the human existence and to which everything is a subject whether animated or not. The second, the holding power that man has often tried to govern, the generating force, severe but calm.Nature and time show themselves to us in the passing of the seasons, in the blooming, growing and perishing of unavoidable cycles, always faithful to themselves, always predictable, but at the same time, sometimes, surprising.Night becomes day, and day becomes night. The earth changes, seed become sprout, flower and plant. Child becomes man.Nothing apparently escapes from these dynamics, except the artist in his capability of disengaging himself from this condition.In Arts the concept of time have been tackled from several points of view: the time of the artist during the creation of the artwork, during the formation of an idea in his consciousness and in its realization. The time of the spectator, from seeing the artwork appearing and materialising in his mind, to recognizing it as something that distinguishes itself from every other product. The time that is between these two moments, the one in which the artwork exists, absolute in it’s own right.We can’t say which moment prevails the others, which is the moment of the “truth”, which deserves more attention, because none of them can exist without the others. Thus we should consider the time of the artwork as the sum of all of these moments of reveal and assimilation in our consciousness. By doing so, we untie the artwork from time.Considering the time of the artwork as the sum of these moments, we recognise in the artist the capability of eternalizing what he his doing, which escapes from our linear temporal conception to go toward a vertical conception.The artist is the one who, above the human being, makes the product immortal, creating the artwork. This is the main difference between the artist and the maker.“Light, deep, green” is an exhibition that wants us to talk about it, through time, nature and their union in artwork. To do it, it leaves the word to three italian artists: Fabrizio Corneli, Federico Gori and Lucia Baldini.Leaves and flowers appear to our eyes in the artworks by Fabrizio Corneli. They live in their images thanks to the click of a switch, that allows light to reach them, making their appearance visible to the world. In Corneli’s case, it’s the light that gives time to the artwork, revealing it. It’s the light that reaches the structure and projects the image: the moment the artwork is revealed is thanks to the action of the switching. The lapse of time, which is between the action of the switch and the vision of the artwork, is the same as the path of the image that passes through the eyes and reaches the mind of the spectator.They are anamorphic artworks, in which the light is the material that creates the representations. Untouchable, yet so vivid and strong. Light in this case is the main medium, but also the great protagonist, because, in its absence, we can define only it’s skeleton, elegant, but not enough to imagine the final result. From metal and glass supports and from these coloured ampoules and wooden chests, the pleasing figures depart and touch the wall.In the virtuosity attributed to Corneli’s artwork a trick is hidden which is the symbolic part, essential to the luminous element, which runs through centuries until it arrives to these results, maintaining always a protagonist role from Caravaggio’s age and maybe also his predecessors’ age. The transfer of the subject is now clear, it’s not the image anymore, the subject is now the light itself.

Federico Gori, in this exhibition shows different types of artworks, which go from the copper sheet of “All the big trees”, “Perenne” and “Dome” and the clump of soil of “13.12”.Natural and life cycles live together in these works, which seem almost to be born from a sample, from the choice of the artist of lingering on a particular perspective of the nature, able to talk by itself, but given to the spectators by the artist’s hand.In the artworks time continuously grows and changes, as the artworks change. The section of the trunk on the copper sheets, as the views of the top of the trees are possible thanks to the presence of salts which draw the surface, the same salts which make that phenomenon of oxidation, which will continue even when the artist ends the work, making it in continuous change until the moment of its stabilisation. Gori uses also the ash, the remains of the trees, applied on the sheet, to create a contrast, not only aesthetic, in opaqueness and lucidity, but also physically, in organic and inorganic.“13.12” is a series of “spaded” clumps, as the artist says, or rather, it is their representation.Painted terracotta sculptures, placed on pedestals, to create a contrast between the poverty of the subject, which recalls the human work, and their preciousness in being shown inside cases, to isolate them even more from the spectator and his space.Thus the artist decides to take action on the time of the artwork, leaving almost untouched the natural temporal variable thanks to the used materials, which will naturally slow down with time, until it reaches immutability.

Memory needs a support on which it can leave its mark. Lucia Baldini decided to use leaves to carry this task out. Leaves from different plants, used like photographic paper, which bring images and faces, similar to the ones we can see in a family photo album. Figures come from solar light burns, with the will of keeping the leaf alive, after its removal from the natural context, thanks to the same light that made it born and grow and allowed it to feed. The sap, which flowed in these leaves, becomes the energetic nourishment, the vital energy, which pervades the characters of the photos.The same light, which allowed the nourishment of the plants, now becomes the guarantor of the memory, inserting itself in time, giving its mark with lines and contours left on the surface.These artworks live in three different moments: the moment of the shutter click of the photographer, Lucia’s time, who created these works, and the moment of the spectator, who looks at them.The materials the artist uses guarantee a suspension of time of the leaves natural evolution, like real natural samples, shown in frames or immersed in resin as they were fossilised, in a process that reminds the marvellous findings of insects and fragments in the precious amber.